Day One
by Kirmon64
Summary: [Shadow Madness] "Barleygrove was razed. I was in the fields. This allowed me to escape harm."


Slightly contradictory of canon events, but I like it anyway. (Sorry, Harv.)

-x-  
-x-

(_Something is wrong,_ Harv's mind whispers. _Something..._)

It's high noon, and the sky goes dark.

It's an unnatural darkness, a deep angry red. There's a cloud of ash on the horizon, spreading across the sky as Harv watches. It blots out the sun and the clouds and the sky, and the air goes dead and still as the world holds its breath.

A human might have been rooted to the spot in terror, in bewilderment. Harv isn't human. He doesn't have emotions. (But he does, and he is scared and confused and _something very bad is going to happen_, he can feel it in his _bones_.)

Then, there is light.

It isn't like sunlight or candlelight or even the electric lights of Karillon. Those are warm and soft and welcoming, an invitation to leave the darkness, to find companionship. This is not. This is vicious and deadly. It flickers green and yellow in the ash cloud, a terrible facsimile of lightning in a storm.

Then, there is fire.

Even from here Harv can see it, even as he's blinking phantom lights out of his vision. Barleygrove _burns_, reduced to ash and hellfire in an instant, and the flames race across his beloved fields, too, devouring them far faster than any mundane fire ever could.

Harv isn't human; he tells himself that he doesn't feel fear, he _can't_, he's a _robot_. And yet...

The sound is next to arrive, an enormous crackling _boom_ that blanks out everything else, the sheer volume of it enough to make Harv stumble back, and that's what finally breaks him out of his trance.

Harv _runs_.

There's a boulder in the field; it's been there for decades, longer than Harv's been alive. He'd been meaning to try and move it for a long time but it's too large for him to do without help, and nobody ever had the time or inclination, so in the field it stayed, an aberration in the perfect rows of grain. Harv sits on top of it at dusk, sometimes, watching the plants in his fields sway in the breeze, allowing himself to feel a rare moment of satisfaction for a job well done.

Harv hurls himself behind it, this time, curling into as small of a ball as his bulky frame can manage, tucking his head between his knees in a feat of flexibility. (And maybe he's a robot, and maybe he doesn't feel fear (_he doesn't_) but he can't help but squeeze his eyes shut and _pray_.)

The flames wash over him, like a million stinging ants, stripping away layers of wood and heating the metal bindings. It hurts like _hell_ and he barely strangles the cry of pain, but it won't kill him, he's made of sterner stuff than that, he isn't merely wood or merely flesh.

His internals, though... they're not heat-resistant. They have a hard enough time keeping up with the summer sun, and this... He realizes this too late, when the pressure becomes too great and something - an artery, a coolant line, he can't tell, bursts in his shoulder, and he _does_ scream then.

And then the world, blissfully, goes dark and cool.

-x-

Harv wakes up to baked earth and the distant scent of burning flesh and a dull throbbing pain in the upper right side of his back.

He can't stand, at first, from a combination of (not-so-)inexplicable shaking and gummed gears, too stiff to stand without effort but too scared to force himself to do it. So he takes stock of his own condition. Barleygrove can wait, it isn't going anywhere...

His diagnostics tell him it was an artery. His insides feel all sticky, which is hardly a pleasant feeling, and there's a trail of blood down his front, too, seeping from a crack in his wooden shell. No doubt there's plenty more on his back. But. He didn't lose enough of it to actually... cease function. The Gadgeteers had built him well.

Then, Harv moves on to taking stock of his surroundings.

The earth beneath him is dry, like the plains after a drought. The wild grass and stray stalks of barley growing around his little haven are all browned and curled, but not burnt, and he decides to take this as a good sign for now. Harv curls one hand in the dirt, feeling the granules sift against his glove, and decides that's enough dawdling.

So he stands up. He wishes he hadn't.

Harv remembers the perfect, flawlessly (_lovingly_) planted rows of grain, his life's work, and... it's gone. Wiped from the face of Arkose. His little hiding place behind the boulder is relatively intact in comparison - the earth is scorched black and cracked from the heat, and embers still linger, dotting the landscape like macabre lights.

In the distance, underneath the cloud of soot and ash that lingers over Barleygrove, the ruins of buildings still stand. Harv can barely recognize their shapes: the ruins of the gatehouse, the western watchtower, the armory, stone walls that were built to outlast a siege and fell in seconds. The sky is a light, cheery blue. A single cloud drifts past the sun. Perfect swimming weather, the children would say.

There are screams in the distance.

Harv picks up his scythe and forces himself forward. He needs to find his owners.

-x-

He does. Anita and Kiran are dead. He only knows it's them because he can see the melted remains of Anita's antique Siltherian necklace draped across her charred neck, and Kiran's cast has turned into a puddle of fibrous goop around his arm. They were in the market, Harv thinks. The center of town. No shelter. Perhaps this anomaly had been directed?

(_At least it was quick,_ he whispers to himself. It doesn't make him feel any better.)

There's a melted heap of... of flesh nearby the stables. Sala had been apprenticed there, crafting and nailing horseshoes, and she'd left bright and early for work this morning as usual... Harv leaves quickly. He doesn't think he'll find anything, and there's a slow feeling of _nausea_ creeping upon him. He doesn't like purging his tanks any more than humans do.

Other survivors begin to emerge from the wreck of Barleygrove as Harv continues to search for Joseph. Every last one of them is frightened and covered in soot and ash and most have heat blisters. Some are in shock. Others are... mentally unsound. Harv doesn't think these will survive til evening.

It takes far longer than it should to find what's left of the Malmot house. Harv has walked to and from that building twice a day for forty-four years now. He doesn't recognize it the first three times he walks past it. Everything is wood, in this section of town, everything but the basements. There's no landmarks left to navigate by.

Harv stares at the ash and charred timbers that used to be a house. He stands there for exactly seven minutes. There might not be a body under that, but it doesn't change the fact that Joseph, like his daughter, couldn't have survived. For the first time in his life, Harv is directionless and completely, utterly, _alone_.

Then, he begins to dig.

Harv knows he's going to go back to Eyre; the Gadgeteers are his owners, now, with all the Malmots dead. Just... just not yet. It's a pathetically _human_ thought, but he doesn't want to leave his old life behind. Not yet. Seeing what's left of Joseph... that will provide closure. Then he can leave.

The wooden remains of the house are heavy and still uncomfortably warm. Harv doesn't bother to keep track of how long he's sifting through the remains of his life. He's already scorched all down his back, of course, but he slowly becomes blacker and blacker from sootstains until he looks more like a monster than a Harvester unit.

There is a cough.

Harv freezes in place, midway through lifting a still faintly-glowing timber. It's a terrible cough. A plague cough, the cough of someone with phlegm or blood or worse in their lungs. It's the sound of the dying.

He'd been digging slowly before. Quietly. His own way of mourning, maybe, if he cared to examine the emotional reasons. To save extra wear and tear on his shoulder, if he examined the logical ones.

Harv flings the plank sideways with all his strength, uncaring of where it ends up. The next one is large and heavy but he doesn't _care_, he has to get - has to -

The cauterized artery tears as he strains, dripping blood down his back once more, but he ignores it, shoving the log up and sideways, and he nearly tumbles down into the hole that's been revealed.

Everything but the basements were made of wood...

Harv pauses, crouching at the edge of the hole. He can see the edge of one of Joseph's workbenches - scorched, but not destroyed. Not charred beyond recognition. There's another noise, something that's probably supposed to be speech but comes out as a death rattle. Harv instantly drops into the hole, searching, hoping...

There, in the corner, lies Joseph. He's burned, terribly so, and Harv thinks that if he were human he might have purged his tanks. His hair is gone, his eyebrows, and his skin, it's -

Harv forces himself forward. Joseph's eyes track him, clear blue in a charred face. He's still aware, still cognizant of the world around him. How much, Harv doesn't know. He doesn't want to know. So he doesn't say anything, but he crouches down and begins the careful task of sifting debris. He doesn't know what he'll do after that. Joseph will never survive his wounds. It's a miracle he's survived this long.

(There's a curious feeling, a sense of choking, of the throat he doesn't have tightening, of impossible tears beginning to form. Harv ignores it.)

"Harv."

Joseph's voice startles him, but he doesn't flinch. Instead he looks to Joseph, meets his focused gaze, and forces himself to hold it.

"Anita? And..."

Harv hesitates. He's not supposed to lie. It's in his programming. And yet he has managed to gain a talent for it, over the years... "She and the children are alive. The healers at the church are taking care of them."

Joseph closes his eyes. Harv holds the breath he doesn't have, because if anyone could see through his lies it was Joseph. Always had been. They had nearly grown up together, after all. Harv had never minded; it merely reinforced the fact that he should never lie. But now... if there's one time in his life that he's been truly desperate for the lie to succeed, it's now. He wants Joseph to die with some semblance of hope.

"Good... good..."

Those eyes focus on him again, but it's distant, now, and Harv knows it's nearly over. He's seen plenty of funerals, plenty of deaths, plenty of people comforting others in their last moments. He's still at a loss about what to do. Nothing fits their situation, their relationship.

"Get help. For Barleygrove."

The last Malmot slips away. Harv lets himself be a little human and closes Joseph's eyes before turning to leave.

He will return to Eyre. But first, he has one last order to carry out.


End file.
